The Erasure of Women

Society likes to brutally control women, for probably obvious reasons. The coöption of transgender rights activism to this purpose is alarming if only in its nuclear-option-level effectiveness to this end. I have been a transsexual (and intersexual) ally for decades. One could well ask to what extent the transgender inclusion movement is a coöption of the transsexual (and intersex) rights issue. Similar dynamics seem to abound in the mental health rights domain, which hits closer to home for me, personally, where people like to coöpt mental health iconography, probably just to garner attention and special privileges for themselves at the expense of the further marginalization of people who actually wrestle with and suffer from the vicissitudes of these conditions, if only by artificially swelling the numbers of claimants and the dilution of the perceived severity (“everyone’s a little bipolar” etc). Feeling a little bit targeted or afflicted by the socially stereotyped features of another group does not confer membership in that group. It SHOULD invoke sympathy for that group and its bona fide members, but alas, those halcyon days when that was normal appear to be behind us.